see their native land again; but hark how
they cheer the soldiers as they drop down
past the transports and set their little band
a-playing God save the Queen ! Now we
can see the low squab gunboat that was
hidden behind her — unsymmetrical, heavy-
metalled craft, as little like her graceful
neighbours as humble-bee to dragon-flies;
but what a sting she has! How different,
again, is this huge leviathan first-rate, signalling
(as she is for ever doing) to her gigantic
sisters, with her endless wardrobe of pocket-
handkerchiefs; within her, in a place — as
appears to us landsmen — only fit to put coals
into, died England's greatest admiral; an
admiral's pennant streams from her even
now ; for she is the Wightmouth flag-ship.
"There are distinguished foreigners arriving,"
say the pocket-handkerchiefs ; and, at that
shrill whistle, see how the crew swarm up
the rigging at full speed.  At once every
stick of timber has its long line of men, and
their hurrahs come down to us from the
height like a light rain of music.

This clean white hulk is for a floating
hospital ; and these two Stygian black ones
— once first-rates of the Line — are coal
depôts ; they have suffered as many changes
as Dibdin's high-mettled racer, and have
reached their final degradation.

Here are, at last, the sides of the great
gunnery ship ; and we ascend the accommodation-
ladder, and enter through that hole
in its stomach which is the gateway of all
such mighty craft.  We are only just in time.
The thirty-two-pounders on either side this
deck (that are now made fast for sea, with endless
coils of rope, apparently inextricable), shall
each be let loose, and shall be run out in
some four minutes, when the drum shall
beat to quarters.  Hark! how the men come
rushing down the ladders and fly to their
several posts, each at his allotted work,
where all seems rank confusion: the gun-lieutenants
watching them to mark which
shall be foremost; and there is emulation
enough amongst themselves besides.  The
gordian knots of rope are all untied more
quickly than Alexander's sword could have
cut through them; and the great muzzles of
the guns peer forth on either side.  The
ports were down before, and all was dusk,
and what we saw, a mass of struggling
forms around a monster.  There are the
gunners, standing each a statue in his fixed
place.  The captains and second captains of
these guns are lieutenants and mates practising
their drill.  Some half-a-hundred of
them are on board this ship, at school, in
hopes to get command of a gun-boat, — one of
those many elegant colliers, yonder, with a
thousand-pounder, or a thing that looks like
it, reposing in the centre of their decks.
Nine-tenths of the new faces seen at Wightmouth
now, are supposed to be on the look-out
for gun-boats.

This beating to quarters, and getting
things ready for action, even to the stowing
away of the hammocks, is reckoned, in
a well-disciplined ship, to take but ten
minutes in all— ten minutes from the first
beat of the drum to the first roar of the
cannon.  In one ship— whither the admiral
came at dead of night, and with his own
private drummer— this thing was done, they
say, in eight minutes.  Now they are going
to fire; and, if we don't want to be stifled, we
had better get on deck at once, where we
shall be only stunned.

Observe the big round hole in the target
at longest range, and even the small
flag slightly riddled: this at one thousand
yards, and  this one at twelve hundred,
are their marks to-day; and the
men will shoot for prizes.  How the ship
trembles as she gives her fire, and how we
jump! Very near the flag! Mark the tremendous
leaps that the huge ball is taking over
the level sea: now it appears but a huge
bullet, and now, in the far distance, a small
oyster-shell, at dick, duck, drake.  Another
and another, till we cannot see for the dense
smoke, and only, when it clears, the water-founts
thrown up along the line of fire.
Excellent practice!  The huge balls bury
themselves around the targets, and are resuscitated
at low-water by the mud-larkers,
to make our British thunderbolts again and
again; for we are an economical nation— if
it were not for our governments— and make
everything go as far as it will.  The distance
guns can carry, Cousin Jonathan, is from
one mile to three; but most sea-ports can be,
of course, approached more nearly.  What a
strange hurtling sound the shell makes, so
different from the sharp thud of the cannon-ball,
and how the terrible iron seems to
rejoice on its way, over its message of death!
Yet Pax vobiscum! is their motto, too, I
think.

Everybody in Wightmouth is naval, unless
he be military: a civilian is, amongst us,
literally a black swan.  The Alphas and
Omegas of both services are here congregated;
the veteran envying the youth, and the youth
the veteran.  Admirals — full, vice, and rear,
and of all the colours in the rainbow — are as
plentiful as beads in a purse.  There go
three of them, cocked-hatted, down the High
Street, abreast, whom the innumerable middies
evade and dodge away from in all
directions, like minnows from sticklebacked
perch.  A lieutanant-colonel is hardly worth
mentioning at Wightmouth, and commanders
are drugs.  No, my fascinating friend of the
Mull Fencibles, it is not in this town that
that uniform of yours— although I grant it
to be exceedingly wonderful— will make
the faintest impression.  Remove that delicate
down from your upper lip with a paper-knife,
and exchange, if you would conquer,
that gory weapon for an umbrella.  The
drums and fifes play here too often to excite
even our urchin world.  The boy scarce